How to build the perfect FPS

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We posted a survey to our our Twitter and Facebook feeds, asking you to help us design the perfect FPS! Let's take a look at how you 877 of you responded, starting with the title of the perfect FPS.

We gave you a list of words that sounded right for an FPS, and asked you to pick your favorite. If we take top five words you picked, put them in order of popularity, and throw a colon in there (because there would definitely be a colon in there), we get this:

Rising Dark Shadow: Apocalypse Protocol

I have to say, this is indeed an amazing title for the perfect FPS. Well done! I would play RDS:AP. I'd even pre-order it. Not only that, but the next five words you chose don't sound too bad together either. Maybe this could be a sequel: Operation Reborn Honor: Ghost Warrior.

RESULTS

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Click the icon in the upper right to enlarge. Based on 877 responses.

I'm already stoked to play both of these. There wasn't a whole lot of love for the words 'soldier' or 'recon', but maybe they can be part of the (Day 1) DLC.

We also left room for you to submit your own words to include in the title. I've used some of them to build a few other awesome FPS titles. Such as:

Super-Ultra-Hyper Robo War: Tempest Beneath
Explosive Space: Silent Mutant Killer
Anti-Dead:
Fantabulous Elephant Beard

I'd play at least two of those.

The setting of RDS:AP is...

RESULTS

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Click the icon in the upper right to enlarge. Based on 877 responses.

Let's talk setting. We gave you some choices on where you think Rising Dark Shadow: Apocalypse Protocol should take place. And, once again, if we take the top few choices and combine them, they sound amazing. Based on your choices, the perfect FPS would take place in a steampunk city in the post-apocalypse during World War II. Now that's some serious alt-history.

London was the next most-popular choice, followed by a space station, and then New York City. An alien planet, the Middle-East, and a facility on Mars were the least popular picks, though we'll be back on Mars in the Doom reboot next year, so we really don't need to go there in our game anyway.

The protagonist of RDS:AP is...

RESULTS

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No ambiguity here. 25% chose to be a regular person in a dire situation over the other options of a mercenary (13%), a Marine (12%), an outlaw (10.7%), a scientist (10.3%), or a detective (8%). I thought about trying to combine them to make your choices into the ultimate perfect hero, but a regular person would have a hard time being both a Marine and a merc.

Unless you were drafted into the Marines, due to the shortage of soldiers during the post-apocalyptic World War II, but then became disillusioned and became a mercenary. An outlaw mercenary, who then became a science detective? It's a bit far-fetched, but this is a game, after all.

Other results

As far as enemies go, 19% of you chose to battle agents of an oppressive government. This was followed by Nazis (14%), terrorists (12%), and wasteland raiders (10%). Gangsters, mutants, and robots were the least popular. But what about a mutant robot gangster? I bet you'd fight that.

Would you want your character in RDS:AP to talk? 28% said yes, they'd like their character to speak regularly. 24% would like them only to speak when the game thinks you need a clue as to what to do next. 18% said they should never talk (count me in there). 11% said maybe a grunt or two when they get hurt, but that's it.

For the protagonist's special power or gear, 29% want an experimental weapon of some kind. Bullet-time was the second favorite (18%), followed by stealth or invisibility (16%), and a jetpack (8%).

In terms of companions, most of you (24%) said no thanks, preferring to lone-wolf it. 19% of you wanted a lot of company in the form of a squad of wise-cracking badasses. 14.6% didn't care who your companion was, as long as their speeds were identical to yours, 14.1% were in favor of a dog, and a sexy alien (8.8%) was slightly favored over a guy talking to you via headset (8.7%).

82% want realistic graphics in RDS:AP. That's so definitive I'm not even going to bother with the other percentages. You also want moddable weapons (23%), realistic weapons (18%), and most of all, you want to get all the weapons without having to pre-purchase the game (26%). I concur.

Finally, we asked which FPS you felt was closest to perfect on PC. Among your many responses were multiple callouts for the following: ArmA 3, Battlefield 3 and 4, Borderlands 2, Bioshock Infinite, Call of Duty 2 and 4, Counter-Strike—and especially CS:GO—Doom, Far Cry 3, Half-Life and Half-Life 2, Quake and Quake 3, and Wolfenstein: The New Order.

Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.